We have LEDs on modems, routers, cases, keyboards, and mice. They all serve to present information to the user (or as mere decoration), but sometimes we don't have a direct visual line, and we can't know exactly what's happening. Are the hard drives working or stuck? Is the network transferring data or not? If you want to reproduce that kind of feedback on your desktop, you need to download a copy of the addLEDs app.
A fairly effective way to check if a computer has suffered a hard hang is to press the NumLock key and try to toggle the LED. Something similar happens with a failing hard drive, though in those cases it's better to combine the LED behavior with the sounds the drive makes. Now, it shouldn't be too complicated for Microsoft to incorporate a series of virtual LEDs in the taskbar. In fact, I recall that old network icons in Windows 9x were animated, but Redmond abandoned that design for some reason, maybe in favor of the real-time reports from Task Manager. Even so, if you're interested in creating virtual LEDs in your taskbar, you only need a small app: addLEDs.
addLEDs mirrors the status of NumLock, CapsLock, Scroll Lock, hard drive activity, and network activity. You can customize the number of LEDs, activate those special keys with the mouse, and modify their color pattern, with green/red being the factory setting. Honestly, there isn't much to change in addLEDs beyond the network sensitivity (1 KB/s works very well), and the rest are direct links to other programs by the developer. One notable thing is that Windows 10 will probably hide addLEDs' virtual LEDs. Go to the taskbar properties and open the section "Select which icons appear on the taskbar" so they stay visible.
addLEDs was updated the day before yesterday, doesn't require a formal installation (the executable is under 250 kilobytes), and uses little memory. I only have to warn you that a VirusTotal scan gives 2/66, but everything seems to indicate false positives. In fact, the two engines are Cylance and Endgame, based on artificial intelligence and with very strange results in the past.
